(Bloomberg) -- The Development Bank of Southern Africa is negotiating with government ministries to establish an office that will manage auctions of transmission projects, a senior official at the state-owned institution said. 

The bank wants to build on its creation of the Independent Power Producer Office, which it handed over to the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy, that’s helped to realize utility-scale wind and solar projects, Michael Hillary, the DBSA’s group executive for financing operations, said in an interview.

The office to bring in private funding to connect renewable generation throughout South Africa’s transmission grid “needs to be signed off by the different parties within government,” he said, without giving a timeline to complete the step. 

Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa in January was reported to have said such an office would either be created by the DBSA or the Industrial Development Corp., another state development bank.

A decision on whether the office will offer so-called build-operate-transfer, build-transfer or other types of arrangements is yet to be decided, he said.

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